


the beautiful and the damned

by strangeness



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 00:38:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6543367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeness/pseuds/strangeness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are in this in between stage of not-quite-anything when Jack is woken up by a phone call at three o’clock in the afternoon from an unfamiliar number.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the beautiful and the damned

Jack figures that they’re in the space between flirting and dating. He looks forward to the feeling of Eric’s hand in his, and they’ve kissed each other in more than a few places with increasing degrees of intimacy. Jack finds himself speaking to Eric in implications, in ‘ _hey, stay the night’s_ ’ and in ‘ _I’ll miss you, hurry back’s_ ’. In his head, their relationship looks like a sprout, something with tiny roots and insignificant leaves. They could grow to branches, and they could grow together in the soil, but to think about that is pointless, because Jack finds that Eric exists in the present; he flutters like a hummingbird and his heart beats in a flustered patter. 

A lot of the time they spend alone together was in the tense silence of something new, which Jack always finds strange and weirdly unnerving, because Eric comes alive when they have company, standing tall and lighting up like his lights had been turned on in the home of his skull, his eyes like windows into a soul that Jack is slowly beginning to realize is strangely beautiful, but elusive. He tells himself there will come a time when Eric shines for him and him alone when they kiss in the dark corners of someone’s house party or in the privacy of Jack’s bedroom. Eric spends three or four nights a week curled up to Jack’s abdomen. They practice breathing in sync, and by the fourth day they’ve mastered it, but then Bitty leaves for a day or two and their wavelengths become scattered. They have to start over, but it doesn’t stop them from trying. 

They are in this in between stage of not-quite-anything when Jack is woken up by a phone call at three o’clock in the afternoon from an unfamiliar number. He squints in the midday sunlight streaming into his room from the open window, still drowsy from the, in his opinion, well deserved nap that’s being disturbed by the phone call in question. He means to reject the call and turn over and fall back asleep, but guilt pools in his gut at the very thought, and before he knows it, the phone is pressed up to his ear, and there is a low static in his ear as the other person on the other end of the line waits for him to speak first.

“…Hello?” His voice is still layered and heavy with sleep, and he turns his face to clear his throat so as not to crackle into the stranger’s ear.

“Jack—“ the voice is breathless, hurried, panicked. It sends an anxious roiling to the hollow of his stomach. “Do you know which hospital he’s at?” Jack blinks once, then twice, at the question. 

“Who?” He asks, the question goes twofold. He wants to know who is on the phone and who’s in the hospital. “Sorry, who is this?” Jack looks up at his ceiling, recalling how often he’s laid there, staring up at the ceiling and tracing patterns in the popcorn. His eyes scan over the roof now, and he can’t find any of the familiar patterns, his eyes don’t settle into the usual grooves and shapes.

“Parse,” the voice answers cautiously. “Sorry, it’s Kent Parson?” The answer returns to Jack in the form of a question. Jack says nothing, and Kent elaborates. “Bitty’s friend. We—we met the other day at Lardo’s party, right?” Now is when Jack recalls the boy with an angular, handsome face. He was young—couldn’t be any older than twenty-four—but not so young that it would be unusual to see him hanging out with Jack and his friends, who had all graduated and were attempting to start careers, or had sold their souls to academia for all of eternity like Jack had. Really, he could _only_ have been Eric’s—Bitty, as those who were his friends called him (and it’s then that Jack realizes that he’s never called Eric by his first name out loud)—friend. 

“Right. Sorry.” Jack speaks in clipped, but still polite sentences. “How did you get this number?” The question is more than a little rude, and he feels bad immediately as an awkward silence falls over them like a thin blanket. Kent seems at a loss as to how to respond, and so for a moment neither of them say anything. “Sorry,” Jack apologizes again. 

“I just wanna know which hospital he’s at. I’ve called like three and none of them know.”

Jack sighs. “What hospital? Who?”  
  
“ _Bitty_!” Kent’s voice is high strung, and it comes out as a muted shriek that makes Jack wince and his stomach bottom out. Denial grips him tightly with bunched fists and does not let go.

“What are you talking about? I just saw him…” He looks over at his alarm clock, trying to do the math before giving up. “This morning.” He finishes lamely. It had only been a matter of hours. 

“Fuck.” Kent breathes into the phone, and it sounds like a curse. “No one’s called you?”

***

_Jack met Eric on the train, crowded with people. Really, their meeting at all was just one possibility in a sea of almost-but-not-quite’s. Jack stood by the door when he got on at rush hour, the place crammed to its hydraulics. Really, he tried to avoid the rush altogether by staying at school until later in the evening, but for some reason that he can’t remember, it was imperative that he got home early that day. It was January, and Jack’s scarf clung to his skin tightly._

_Two stops later, the amount of people in that particular car thinned out, and Jack slipped into an aisle seat, sandwiched between an elderly woman and a teenaged boy with a guitar case. Jack looked up and across the aisle to see Eric there, looking his way, almost knowingly._

_Eric smiled at Jack for the first time, shy and small, and then glanced away. Jack stared at him for a moment before looking out the window over Eric’s shoulder instead. It was an instant connection, and that is all it was, Jack thought initially, two strangers making eye contact before never seeing each other again._

_He was wrong. They get off at the same stop, using the same door. Eric only laughed, the sound is full of youth, and thick with Georgia._

Almost-but-not-quite, Jack thinks now. Ironic.

***

The thing is that he doesn’t even go to the hospital. He sits around in a peculiar state, shuffling into his living room to lounge at the bay window, his knees pulled up to his chest. He watches the city full of people below move in simultaneous and organized chaos. He watches as the sun moves from twelve o'clock to nine, feels the sun on his face segue to shadow. He watches life continue, as cliché as it is. Jack breathes shallowly and quietly and does not move from his position until the streetlights come on. 

The thing is, Jack cannot quite fathom why Eric all of the sudden means more to him. Jack doesn’t know when Eric became Eric and stopped being Bitty. Jack is driven, Jack is determined, Jack has a plan for his life, a vision for himself and his future that he is following to the letter. Before today, Eric was nothing but a detour, something to entertain himself with. Fun and sweet, sure, but in the end the two of them were having fun with one another. 

_“What exactly,” Lardo had asked him, “are your intentions with that boy?” Those are words that Jack had learned to playfully dread, because the question was never entirely serious, but never entirely in jest._

_“It’s just flirting,” he told her. “It’s innocent. We’re just having fun.” The answer was vague and the two of them know it. Lardo arched her sculpted brow at him._

_“Since when are you known for having fun, Jack?” She asked._

_Jack shrugged at her every time, because she had a point but as determined as he was, he was also just as stubborn. “Don’t you think I’ve earned just a little here and there?” Lardo always dropped it after that._

He wonders what she’ll ask now. “ _Are you alright?_ ” He doesn’t know the answer to that one. “ _Do you miss him?_ ” Yes, of course. It would be weird not to. “ _You can talk to me._ ” Jack doesn’t know what else there is to say.

Jack Zimmermann and Eric Bittle had been seeing each other for exactly three months and twenty-eight days. It was just flirting, it was innocent. Jack isn’t even sure if they were officially together, but he has lain a posthumous claim to Eric that no one else quite matches the qualifications for, even if Jack himself isn’t the best fit. 

Maybe it’s that he was and is a little bit in love with Eric. That’s fair, that’s a possibility that could have occurred regardless of whether Eric had lived or not. Jack remembers spending nights watching Eric’s shoulder rise and fall slowly with the effort of slumbering breath and wondering if he could do this every day, counting freckles on sun kissed skin and burying his nose in blonde hair and smelling rhubarb. Concrete answers allude him until it is irrelevant, and now he watches the world and says _yes, yes absolutely_.

***

Jack expects himself to react in some visceral way. He expects blood and guts and tears and snot and ugliness. He expects himself to hole himself up in his bedroom and pulling his blankets up to his chin and inhaling the smell of their togetherness, absorbing it into his skin to carry forever. Instead, he carries on. It confuses everyone around him—Lardo, his parents—but no one is more off put by his decision to get up every morning and simply _continue_ than Jack is. Friends and family stop by his apartment in a dirge composed of ‘ _sorry for your loss’_ s’ instead of music.

The weekend offers him a reprieve, and he spends most of the day in his bed. He recalls one Saturday, sunny and cold with February’s cruel familiarity, where Eric was drawing concentric circles around his nipple with the tip of his finger. The motion was repetitive, coquettish, intimate. It made Jack’s skin crack open into goosebumps. Neither of them said anything, had no need to, but Jack remembers Eric wore his old hockey jersey, the material hanging off of him like a curtain instead of a shirt, pooling around his hips. Eric tried to return it, Jack laughed and told him to keep it. He never saw it again. 

Now, today, Jack lays in bed and lets himself cry once and only once, pulling his duvet over his head and letting out a pathetic noise. It’s all he can afford.

***

Jack meets Kent for the second time on campus, completely by accident. It is a seasonably warm day in late March, and a group of Eric’s friends sit crosslegged in a circle in the quad. Jack makes a note to be thankful for the lack of snow on the ground as he passes by them. From ten feet away, Kent glances up at him and their eyes connect in a way that makes Jack want to sink into the ground. There is recognition in Kent’s face, a kinship that he thinks he and Jack share. This boy wants to connect with Jack through their shared grief, a bond that Jack isn’t sure he needs or even wants to make. 

It’s still enough to pull Jack over, and he hears the group of friends whispering about him even from several steps away. Their attempts as whispering aren’t particularly subtle or quiet. Kent says nothing, and he is the only one to actually match Jack’s gaze and to really look at him at all.   
  
“Um,” Jack says, coming to a stop at the edge of the circle. Eight set of eyes glance up at him intently. “Hi.” It’s inelegant, sloppy, clumsy, everything Jack doesn’t want to be. “May I join you?” There is a murmur of assent, and so he sinks to his knees as the circle breaks, giving way to his intrusion. Jack quickly becomes aware of just how contradictory his presence here is. These people say nothing at first, but then begin to exchange stories of Eric from before Jack, during Jack, whenever. It occurs to him that these people know Eric in a way that Jack was never given the opportunity to. These people were afforded the ultimate intimacy that Jack had been denied—they knew Eric in a way that Jack had only just begun to, a way that was no unknowable and impossible.

It’s unfair, he thinks. He had been the one who got to kiss this person’s lips, this person’s neck, this person’s hips and thighs. Jack is the person who got to know Eric in this way, and yet when the circle comes to him, expecting a story of some kind out of him, he has nothing to say. He has no stories of Eric and how he brought Jack to tears with laughter, or moved him to some degree, or changed his life in some profound way like everyone else gathered here seems to. 

“I didn’t—“ Jack begins, and everyone eyes him in a way that makes his skin prick in irritation. “I wish I had got to know him as well as you all got to.” He says, and he lifts his eyes from the grass—half alive, half dead—to peer at Kent, who has tears brimming on his eyelids precariously, front teeth worried furiously on his thin bottom lip. Jack swallows and feels himself pulling away from these people who wish to bring him closer, not knowing how unlike them he is. “Thank you for sharing all of this with me.” Those are his parting words, pulling himself to his feet and walking away without a look back.

***

_The first time Jack met Suzanne Bittle was when her son was alive. It was a brief thing in passing when she was in town on a spontaneous trip to see Eric. For once, Jack slept over at Eric’s dorm because they had spent the previous night at a campus party thrown by the hockey team, and Jack had been way too tired to go home at around three o’clock in the morning._

_It was three weeks before Eric died, and Suzanne was knocking on his dorm door eagerly, shortly before noon. The two of them bolted awake and Eric immediately started handing Jack his clothes, and Jack felt ashamed to be meeting the mother of his almost-boyfriend in a plain t-shirt and jeans faded from the wash. Jack watched from the bed as Eric answered the door and immediately launched himself into his mother’s arms, finding himself bubbling with warmth as he observed them, ensconced in their world of joy and southern mannerisms. He remembered thinking about how much Eric looked like her, but not much beyond that._

_Eric introduced him, of course, and he and Suzanne exchanged pleasantries before he made to excuse himself. Suzanne extended an invitation to him, wanting to know him better, but he politely declined. When he left, he heard the two of them whispering about him, although he didn’t know what they said for certain._

_Later, Eric had whispered in his ear as they had sex. “I’m glad you aren’t a hook up. That would have been difficult to explain.” Jack recalled agreeing with a distracted hum, hitching Eric’s left leg of his hip._

Suzanne Bittle stands before him wearing a sundress adorned with cheery, but worn sunflowers. over her shoulder is a straw tote that would be adorable in any other context, but Jack notices how she carries herself in the way that only a mother who is no longer a mother can. 

“Mrs. Bittle,” is all he can say, and she looks at him, long and unflinchingly. Her eyes are bloodshot, although her makeup is impeccable. Her sadness is only visible to the trained eye. She says nothing in kind, doesn’t need to, because Jack steps back, extending to her an invitation which she accepts.

They sit across from each other in silence at Jack’s dinner table. He offers her something to drink, which she quietly declines. Just as it’s beginning to get awkward, she cracks, leaning forward in her set and resting her forearms on the wood surface of the table. “Did you love my son?” She asks him simply.

Jack blanches. “I—Mrs. Bittle—”

“It doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t.” She say simply, and Jack can tell that she is trying to control herself by how her voice shakes, quivering as if she is being rocked by an earthquake that is unquantifiable by any scale. “I just—” Now she leans back, bringing her hands to her face. For a moment, Jack thinks she’s going to bury herself in them and weep, but then she brushes her hair back and takes a deep breath. “Jack, I just need some peace in my heart.”

“I would have liked to.” Jack says simply, honestly, thoughtlessly. “I think…well, that’s the direction things were heading for us.” He continues. _I feel as if something has been taken from me. Not just Eric, but my memories, my time_. He wants to say, but doesn’t. _I feel like the grief I am feeling is not my own_.

Suzanne gifts him with a pained smile that is stretched thin over her round face. “That’s sweet,” she murmurs. “I came to tell you that,” she clears her throat, “there is a vigil being held in a week. I’d really like it if you could say a few words at it.”

“Of course,” Jack says, automatically, before the weight of what he is agreeing to can wash over him. 

“Good,” Suzanne nods. “That boy,” she sighs, “was sweet on you, I think he’d like it like this.” Then, she reaches across the table to take one of Jack’s hands in both of hers, and when Jack looks into her eyes, he sees Eric’s. It’s like a scrape to the knees, and so he looks away. 

A few minutes later, she is standing and getting up to leave. It occurs to Jack that he doesn’t know the answer to only question on his mind, and he blurts it out as he walks her to the door.

“Suzanne, how—” he sputters. “I mean how did he—“

“Hit and run,” she deadpans, tired. “In broad daylight.” She lets out a rueful little laugh that would be musical if it wasn’t just barely below the threshold of shrill, manic. “He was always a good son, he did what he was told. The sign said to walk, so he walked.”

Jack blinks, wonders how he couldn’t have known that.   
  
“Than you, Jack.” Suzanne says, opening the door and turning to him. “I’ll be seeing you.” She departs, the door clicks softly behind her.

***

“Bitty kept a journal,” Kent tells him in a hushed voice, standing in the hallway outside of Eric’s dorm. Jack isn’t sure why Kent is telling him this, isn’t sure why he agreed to break into a dead boy’s room in the first place. “It’s private. He didn’t want anyone to read it. His mom is gonna clean his room out soon and…” He trails off, and the rest is obvious.

“And I should have it?” Jack asks, confused as to why he’s been deigned worthy. Kent just nods sagely.

“I don’t think _anyone_ should have it. But if anyone can, it’s you.” Jack is told, and he couldn’t agree less. _You’re wrong_ , he wants to say. _It should be you_ , he wants to say. _It should be anyone except me, It should be someone who actually knew him_.

Kent jimmies the lock, once, twice. It whines, but gives way and the door swings open. Jack hasn’t been back here the day he met Suzanne, and he knows he won’t come back here again. Once his purpose here is done, this will just be another dorm. This was a space Eric inhabited on his own, it didn’t exist in the tiny sphere he and Jack had carved out in their brief but infinite togetherness. 

One of them flip the light on, they fumble in the dark so it’s impossible to determine who exactly. “He kept it under the mattress.” He murmurs, making his way across the room to the bed and shoving a hand into the space between the bed’s frame and mattress. A moment later, he pulls out a sky blue moleskin notebook, which he offers to Jack.

Jack, who realizes he’s never seen this journal before in his life, with Eric or otherwise. Jack, who realizes that there is an entire side to Eric that he never got to so much as witness, let alone get to know. “Jack,” Kent says. “Just take it. Do whatever you want with it.”

Jack, who takes the notebook offered to him. “You know,” he begins, unsure of why he's even telling the other man. “His mother asked me to speak at the vigil.” He watches as an array of expressions flit over Kent’s face as if a stop-motion video exists in a microcosm on his features.

He laughs uncomfortably, taking a step back out of this room that is both unfamiliar and sad to him. “I have no idea what I’m gonna say.”

Kent follows him out of the room, shutting the door gently behind them. “You’ll think of something,” he says encouragingly, knowingly, like he is familiar with Jack at all, and maybe he does, maybe he is, if only a little.

***

Jack sits on Lardo’s living room floor, next to her coffee table. The table is clear of everything except for Eric’s journal. Jack has a beer in his hand, which he sips intermittently, his eyes not leaving the worn, plain cover. Lardo, who sits on the opposite side of the table, her back pressing into her microsuede couch, looks at Jack with pursed lips, nursing a beer of her own, although it remains unopened.

“Are you gonna read it, or are you hoping that you’ll just absorb whatever he said by staring at it long enough?” She asks him, and Jack doesn’t answer, not at first.

If he’s being honest, Jack is terrified to read what Eric has written. He isn’t sure if he wants to read what Eric thought of him during their time together, or worse, he’s afraid that Eric hasn’t mentioned him at all.“I don’t know,” he replies, uncertain.

“Just read a page.” She offers. “It can’t be that hard.” But it _is_ , Jack wants to tell her. Instead, he takes another sip of his beer, wincing at the wheat aftertaste it leaves in his mouth. He runs his tongue over his teeth in an attempt to cleanse them before giving up and peering up at her in silent question.

Lardo gives an enormous, exasperated sigh. She leans over and snatches the journal off of the table, delicately extracting the band from the cover and peeling the front open to the first page. She flips through the title page before Jack watches her eyes scrawl briefly across what is written there. She looks up at Jack and shrugs. “It’s been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. But this wouldn’t do—and wouldn’t last.” She reads, holding the page outwards after the words leave her mouth and she let’s Jack read it for himself. “Talk about eerie.” She comments idly.

“It’s a quote,” Jack murmurs, distracted, as he takes the book from her hands and looks at Eric’s writing—neat and elegant, he writes in cursive in evenly spaced, appropriately sized letters that look at home on the page. “It’s from this book he was reading for class.”

Lardo hums, and then cracks her own can open, waving it in Jack’s general direction. “Still…” She remarks. “Don’t you think that’s a little _heavy-handed_ considering recent events?” Jack doesn’t answer her question, tracing the words on the page with his free hand. 

_“You still reading that old book?” Jack had teased, launching himself from the foot of the bed and onto the mattress next to Eric, who turned a page as if he hadn’t just been disturbed. Jack pressed his face into the pillow and looked up at the other man, who sat with his legs crossed, his back slightly hunched, his elbows resting neatly on his thighs._

_“I have to for class,” Eric replied simply. “Besides, I sort of like it.” Jack had snorted at that statement, rolling onto his back before sitting up with his hands resting behind his head, strangely at peace in this moment of domesticity._

_“You do?” He murmured, his hand running up and down Eric’s arm in a ghostly, tentative touch. “I thought you only liked things that came out this decade.” He was half teasing, half serious. He had heard enough of Beyonce to last him a lifetime in the brief time he had shared with Eric—to the point where he found himself humming one of her ballads to himself when alone, which had made him both smile wide and bury his face in his hands in irritation._

_“_ Not _true, Jack.” Eric chastised, playfully scowling at him. “The ‘80s and ‘90s had some great music come out of them.” He said, and Jack wanted to ask why he never listened to_ that _music, but Eric continued. “Besides,” he waved the book around with a slight flair to his wrist. “I like this. It’s not as stuffy as you’d think. Everything in the ‘20s was so tragic and over the top. Listen to this—“ Eric recited the quotation, his voice taking on that of a narrator that is unfamiliar to Jack, but must come from the world of the novel._

_“So?” Jack asked, his right brow peaking._

_“_ So _,” Eric continued. “I love it. I live for the tension, the drama.” He shot him a wink that made Jack lean up to kiss him quickly, chastely._

_Jack didn’t reply, not directly. “I’m hungry,” he murmured against Eric’s lips._

***

Eric’s handwriting, as it turns out, is neat and even, the letters are elegant and slot together in never-ending loops. Jack is enamoured by the lettering, by how all of the characters are the same size, the same slant. Consistent and constant and unflinching, even Eric’s periods are pointed and classy. Jack figures he should love these letters, these words left in an unintentional and posthumous letter.

Jack holds in his hands, the will and testament of Eric Bittle, and no one in the world knows it. Except, maybe, for Kent Parson, who only half knows. Jack supposes that the mystery of the unknown has to be thrilling for Kent on some level, and Jack wonders if it would be better to live in partial ignorance or to never know at all.

Eric writes in long and run-on sentences. His wording is unelegant, jarring, rapid. His words pour onto the page in a haphazard way that doesn’t match the careful and measured penmanship.

 

 

> _I met this grump on the train today and I think I basically wanted to kiss his face from the moment we accidentally made eye contact because honestly, what are the chances that I meet another gay dude on the train when I OBVIOUSLY looked like total crap? I was wearing my bad flannel! Thanks for looking out Jesus you traitor._

Jack pauses, realizes he never told Eric that he was bisexual, not gay, and continues.

 

 

> _I called him a grump, but this dude was seriously hot like I’m talking frat boy meets pretentious photography student with a cashmere scarf type of pretentious. I think he knew my weakness(es) and it kind of makes him a huge jerk. I already have a list of reasons to hate this guy because he is honestly thinks it’s okay to waltz into my life right after everything that happened, right when I decide, hey maybe love isn’t real._
> 
> _I’m being ridiculous. DON’T put this on the net, Bitty._

Jack finds the words humorous in a twisted sort of way that is like swallowing a razor that turns him to ribbon. He wonders what everything is, and how it happened. He wonders if this is the last time he will feel Eric’s everything ever again. 

There are a few blank pages, and Jack realizes that Eric only wrote in this notebook sparsely to pass time, to organize particularly niggling thoughts that bored him on quieter days. It explains why he never saw Eric writing in it; they had existed in motion. Motion, Jack thinks now, eludes him as if someone has pressed pause.

Then:

 

 

> _Parse won’t stop texting me. Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone._

Then:

 

 

> _Jack reminds me of him sometimes. It hurts more than it should._

Then:

 

 

> _Am I settling? He won’t stop texting me and he’s my friend but this is hard and I’m with Jack and I don’t know what to do because I like Jack but Parse is Parse and Bitty is Bitty and oh my god I’m referring to myself in third person are we really at that point????_

Jack is afraid to go on. He feels as if he’s swallowed a spoon and it’s thick in his throat, forcing him to gag dryly with nothing coming up, as if it hasn’t happened at all. The journal trembles in his mortal hands, and he flips through several empty pages until he comes to the back cover, where Eric has written something.

 

 

> _Eric Zimmermann._  
>    
>  Eric Parson.  
>    
>  Kent Bittle.
> 
> _Bitty._

And that’s it, that’s everything. 

***

“Did—” Jack begins, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjust to the dark of Kent Parson’s living room, which is lit by nothing but scented candles which make each breath a chore to endure. He heard the shuffle of a cat somewhere in the room, but doesn’t turn his head in the direction of the sound. Kent is looking at him expectantly, and Jack casts his gaze downwards to his shoes, his feet, the ground as told by an apartment three stories up. “You and Bitty, were you ever a thing?”

Kent seems a little alarmed by the question, and he blows out one of the four candles on the table, selecting arbitrarily which one has the flame most easily dismissed. “Not officially,” he murmurs, fishing in his pocket for a lighter. “He had a thing for me, it wasn’t mutual. I thought he was over it.”

Jack is acutely aware of the fact that he may or may not have been nothing but a distraction from reality for Eric, and his stomach churns in protest and he can’t decide if he feels hungry or nauseous. He lets the silence stretch a second or two longer than it should, because Kent lights the wick of the candle he's just extinguished with the lighter in his hand before setting it back down on the table.

For a second, he wonders if Kent is telling him the truth, if it really was just a stupid crush on Eric’s part, or if there was more. He isn’t sure if it would be better or worse if this person he’s on the verge of loving over mortal borders cared about _him_ or pretended he was someone else over a crush or a lost love. He isn’t sure what is worse to replace.

“Jack,” Kent says quietly, and his words are soft in a way that makes Jack’s skin crawl. “That’s all it was, right?”

Jack swallows, his throat parched and the bobbing of his Adam’s apple is laborious. He could answer the question, could offer Kent some comfort, but he cannot produce for others what he lacks for himself. Instead, he speaks, and his voice is strained, but still polite. “The vigil is in three days. You should speak at it, not me.”

“Jack—“

“No, you knew him better than I did.” He insists, and he makes to leave. Kent follows him to the door and he slams a hand on the wall next to Jack’s head when he goes for the knob.

“ _You_ were with him. _You_ were the one who knew him better than anyone. You keep _downplaying_ how much you guys meant to each other. For Christ sakes, you were dating.” Jack determines that Kent is trying not to yell, to not scream in Jack’s face. Grief is coursing through Kent in stages, and Jack finds himself jealous because this means that Kent will heal, while Jack is stuck in a stasis of hurt that might not let him go. 

“I knew his body.” Jack says. “I might have wanted to know his soul. But he was _Bitty_. I was Jack. There wasn’t a Bitty and Jack in the same way there was a Bitty and Parse. There—“ He wavers, staring intently at Kent for a second. Kent, whose eyes are wide in angry disbelief. Kent, whose lips are pursed—a furious gash of a mouth pulled taut over the lower half of his features. 

Jack wants to tell Kent that he thinks Eric’s heart belonged to him, but it isn’t something that Jack is ready to say. “I had his body, but you had his mind. You had his soul. He’s more yours than he ever was mine.”  
  
With that, Jack leans over to the shelf near the door and blows out the candles that line them, a flame for Jack, a flame for Kent, and a flame for Bitty—only Eric’s candle refuses to go out. He leaves.

***

Jack decides he is going to give Kent the journal, that he deserves to know that maybe Eric never really did get over things between them. That’s why he goes to the vigil. He doesn’t speak, Suzanne Bittle does, a freshman by the name of Justin Chow does. Most importantly, Kent Parson does.

Kent talks about how wonderful Eric—Bitty—is. He talks about how Bitty was a master baker, how Bitty was the funniest person he knows and knew, how Bitty ran a successful vlog online, how he was an open person who wasn’t afraid of getting hurt and put himself out there in every single possible way for every day of his life. It’s a moving speech, if a little rehearsed. All it does is make Jack realize that these people knew a Bitty and he knew an Eric, he feels like a stranger attending a funeral he’s walked in on by accident despite the fact that he may be the only person in attendance to ever kiss the deceased.

The crowd disperses and Jack tries to find Kent in the organized chaos of people quietly reminiscing over stories of this Bitty that Jack knew and did not know and would never know again. Kent turns to him with narrowed eyes, his arms crossed over his chest in defense, as if Jack is on the attack.

“He wasn’t over you,” Jack blurts out, pulling the journal from his jacket pocket and extending it towards Kent with a shaken hand that grips the front and back cover a little too tightly between four fingers. “I—it was me. I was the distraction. He used me to get over you. That’s why—it wasn’t right for me to say anything here.”

“You fucking idiot.” Kent says without hesitation, not accepting the journal. The words make Jack’s extended arm drop to his side, a dumbfounded expression crossing over his face. “Follow me.” Kent tells him, and he does.

***

Kent’s apartment is lit by lamps now, and only Eric’s candle by the door is still lit. They didn’t talk the entire way to Kent’s apartment, and so for a moment Jack feels the need to lighten the mood by lecturing the other man on fire safety, but the moment passes and Kent is locking the door behind them. Jack kicks his shoes off and takes the candle in his hand, following Kent into his living room.  
  
“Kent, what—“ Jack begins to form a question, but Kent is already across the room, opening his laptop. “Why am I here?”

“He had a diary.” Kent tells him.

“I know,” Jack says. It’s burning a hole in his pocket.

“No, not that one. A _real_ one. The vlog.” Kent explains, typing rapidly on the keyboard and putting his laptop on the table. “Watch.”

***

_“I don’t really like to talk about it, because he’s a private person.” Eric says on screen. He speaks in a hushed tone, and Jack realizes that Eric is sitting in Jack’s bedroom, recording on his phone. Eric falls back on the mattress and spreads himself out against the blankets._

_“I’m seeing someone, though.” Eric murmurs, and his voice is full with possibility. “It’s nothing serious, but I think I want it to be. He’s handsome, and he cares about me. I can see a future there.” Eric makes eye contact with the camera now, winking mischievously. “I’m in his bedroom right now, but that’s a secret, and it’ll be embarrassing if he ever sees this because I’m giving some major stalker vibes.”_

_There’s a cut, hardly noticeable. “I know I might still be kinda caught up on the last guy—and before you guys start, I’m not gonna go off about him again. That part of my life is over, uh, for the most part.”_

_“I’m gonna ask if he wants to do this for real. Like, be my boyfriend and everything. I’ve been dropping hints, but as cute as this boy is, he’s like a sack of potatoes.” Eric laughs, easy and full. “I just wanted to let you guys know. I’m doing okay, I’m safe. I know I haven’t updated you all in a while, but I wanna change that. The semester’s gonna end soon and summer is gonna take over. So who knows what’s gonna happen? Hopefully I spend it in love. Cross your fingers for me.”_

_He hears his bedroom door open, and there is a shuffling as the camera is turned off. A title card is displayed explaining Jack’s entrance into the bedroom._

***

“When—“ Jack asks and doesn’t ask, because he knows and doesn't.

“Two days before.” Kent answers and doesn’t answer.

Jack turns to look at the other man and feels strangely intertwined with him. He and Kent, the man Eric wanted to love but didn’t quite yet, and the man Eric did love and no longer wanted to. Now neither of them had anything.

Between them, a world, a life, has been built, half of it residing in each of them. Kent leans forward and blows Eric’s candle out—for real this time. Its smoke wisps and billows into nothing. Jack looks at the extinguished candle intently, and in a moment he sees a future with Eric unfurl and then collapse.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry.
> 
> i don't know what i'm doing i haven't slept in 48 hours.
> 
> inspired pretty heavily by cold pastoral by marina keegan, published [here](http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/cold-pastoral).


End file.
